How to Calculate Contact Centre Service Level

In this article, we will provide you with the best formula, methods and advice on how to calculate service level in the call centre.

In actuality, service levels are quite easy to calculate in the contact centre, but there has been a lot of confusion on how to measure them.

The Formula

This then gives you a percentage service level.

It’s really as easy as this.

For example, if a company has an objective to answer 80% of all calls within 20 seconds, the Service Level Threshold is 20 seconds.

Worked Example

Both of the pieces of information used in the calculation below can be taken from the contact centre’s Automated Call Distribution (ACD) system or, failing this, can be gathered from Call Detail Records (CDRs).

Number of calls answered within the service level threshold = 136Number of calls offered = 170

A new service level should be calculated for each new reporting period, which for most contact centres would be every half hour, if it is impossible to do so in real time.

By doing this, the contact centre can see whether or not they have the correct number of advisors to handle varying call volumes throughout the day.

Timing Generally Starts After the IVR Selection

Generally, the service level time starts post-IVR selection.

Service level is based on ‘Of the calls you COULD have answered, how many were answered in x seconds?’

Dave Appleby

“I’ve not come across anyone who does it the other way. The rationale being that service level is based on ‘Of the calls you COULD have answered, how many were answered in x seconds?’,” said Dave Appleby.

However, keeping a separate track of the number of calls that “drop-out” of the IVR can be be a useful measure of its effectiveness.

Be Careful With ACD Stats

On certain ACD systems the service level displayed on the wallboards could be misleading.

For example – you have a service level target of 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds. A 100% service level figure on your ACD stats does not mean that 100% of calls were answered within 20 seconds.

The 100% figure actually means that 100% of calls met the service level target (i.e. 100% of 80% of calls were answered within the target). Similarly, a service level figure of 80% may only mean that 64% of calls (80% of 80%) were answered in the threshold time. This has certainly confused many people.

In this case, it would be safer just to display the percentage of calls answered within 20 seconds.

Do You Have to Stick to the Industry Standards for Service Level?

As noted earlier, most contact centres stick to the industry standards of service level, which is to answer 80% of calls in 20 seconds.

However, there are signs to suggest that contact centres are starting to relax their service levels. According to our white paper, “What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now“, the number of contact centre professionals who would consider service level as a “very important” metric has decreased from 70.0% to 62.7% in just twelve months.

Those who are thinking in this way could be questioning the impact of service level on Customer Satisfaction (CSat) and argue that spending more time on ensuring First Call Resolution (FCR) would please customers more than focusing on meeting a particular service level.

However, while this is a good case for not targeting advisors against time-based metrics, calculating service level is still an important part of workforce management (WFM) for many contact centres.

How People Manipulate Service Levels

As with all metrics, as soon as people see that a metric is important, then they will start to manipulate the results.

Here are the three most common ways that service level results are manipulated:

1. Excluding Abandoned Calls

The easiest way that people can fiddle the service level figures is to exclude abandoned calls from the calculation.

For example, the Cisco contact centre software allows for three different ways of calculating service level.

Abandoned Calls Have a Negative Impact on Service Level(This is the correct method)

The number of calls answered within the threshold divided by the number of calls that had a service level event. This treats these abandoned calls as though they had exceeded the threshold.

Abandoned Calls Have No Impact on Service Level (Should not be used)

The number of calls answered within the threshold divided by the number of calls that had a service level event minus the number of calls that were abandoned before exceeding the service level threshold. Calls abandoned before the service level threshold expired are removed from this calculation.

Abandoned Calls Have a Positive Impact on Service Level(Is used to manipulate service levels)

The number of calls answered within the threshold plus the number of calls abandoned within the threshold, all divided by the number of calls that had a service level event. This treats these abandoned calls as though they were answered within the threshold.

2. Changing the Targets (albeit temporarily)

I know of an on-the-spot decision by a director, who changed the service level from 90/15 to 80/20 and then recalculated the quarter just so they didn’t miss the target!

3. Putting in a Call-Screening Group

Some companies put in place a call-screening or triage group. This is similar to the company switchboard in that this quickly answers the calls before transferring them to a longer queue in the appropriate department.

This is sometimes used to cover up service level problems. For example, a few years ago, one of the regulators put in place a metric on the speed of answer of telephone calls.

Between 1996 and 2005, the regulator targeted companies in the UK to answer 90% of calls in 30 seconds as part of their plan to improve customer service.

This seemed to show good progress in that industry, moving from 26% of calls not being answered in 30 seconds in 1996 to 1997 down to 8% of calls in 2002–2003.

The rumours that I heard were that one company tried to get around the target by putting in a small call-screening group, who would answer the call and then transfer it to the appropriate department (in effect, a switchboard). The call was not resolved any faster but it made the service level figures look better as it was deemed answered at the first stage.

Whether or not this was true, in 2005 the regulator replaced the single service level metric with a new set of measures to provide “a more complete picture” of telephone call handling.

How do you measure service level?

So, how do you measure service level? What is your service level threshold? Please put your answers in an email to Call Centre Helper

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In some outsourced environments, included in the service level calculation is the contracted volume of calls vs the actual volume routed during that interval. If the calls routed are above the contracted volume, the SL target may be missed and possibly impact subsequent intervals. This would therefore need to be considered in the SL calculation.

Sello Moseki
22 Jan at 5:32 pm

Sello,

Agree with you in principal but…

This should only be used as a measure between the contact centre and client. The actual customer experience is (or should be) a separate measure you track at the same time.

I have worked contracts where up to 10% variance from the client forecast keeps the SL target, but, should
the variance go over 10% the ‘best endeavours’ principal applies.

Regards

DaveA

Dave Appleby
23 Jan at 1:10 pm

Hi,

I disagree with your comments around the abandoned calls that shouldn’t be ignored.

If I have a 90/30, and a call is abandoned after 11 seconds, why should the SL be penalised? I still had 19 seconds to answer that call.

All calls abandoned before threshold should be ignored.

Regards,

Luc Denis
25 Mar at 7:03 pm

Including abandoned calls is right.

The service level should look at the 90% of calls answered in 30 seconds. The call abandoned so you didn’t answer it. Had you got there in 10 seconds it would not have abandoned.

jonty pearce
26 Mar at 4:22 pm

Is there a way to compute for the SL projection for a day or future dates with the following information available?

Old thread now but I disagree with the principle of including abandoned calls depending on your Service Level Agreement.

If you have SLAs for 80/20 answer rate and say a within 4% abandon call rate then including abandoned calls means you are penalising twice for each abandoned call.

Abandoned calls should be penalised under a ACR agreement and 80/20 then applies to 80% of answered calls being answered in 20 seconds…or at the very least exclude those that abandoned under the threshold. Otherwise you could have 10 calls offered, 5 of them abandon in 5 seconds and you are instantly saying that you only answered 50% of the calls in 20 seconds where as if they had held on for an extra 10 seconds all of those could have been answered.

James
7 Apr at 1:35 pm

Old thread but for people who are saying that abandoned should be ignored because some calls are getting abandoned before the threshold. Calls getting abandoned before the threshold are called as short abandoned and they don’t impact your SL in any ways. If calculated properly, It helps boost your SL.

Service Level = {(Total calls answered within threshold +calls abandoned within a shorter amount of time than the threshold)/(total calls answered + total calls abandoned)} * 100%

Abu
1 Sep at 12:35 am

I came across a statement that the SLAs should be calculated only for the calls inside the opening hours (all calls coming outside the office hours should be ignored).

How do you see that?

Aya
4 Oct at 9:21 am

In the system that i use, it doesn’t show the offered number but shows what we handled and the Service level equivalent. Is there a way like reverse math to get the total contacts offered?

Grubber
13 Oct at 11:21 pm

I read through several of the comments. We calculate SL in several different ways depending on the contract we have with the client. If they ask for a SL based on ALL calls answered, and since we can track our clients by a variety of ways, we use the IVR containment in that calculation since it is ALL calls. We do exclude calls abandon within SL, and I would actually argue that the contract doesn’t say all the calls you could have answered, as including Abandon. It specifically states % Calls Answered within Threshold. Many of these contracts include a separate measurement for an Abandonment rate. So IF you include the abandons in the over all SL, you are “dinging” yourself twice. It does not make sense to include the abandon calculations in two places. But back to my point, if the contract says “Agent only” then we look at agent only calls and do not include IVR containment/retention in the calculation. So we try and report to our clients based on the contractual, (or our interpretation), of the requirements.

Mags Temple
29 Nov at 6:09 pm

I understand service levels for calls. How do people record their service levels for emails, post, social media etc?

Daniel
8 Feb at 3:52 pm

Service level for emails, post, social media and web chat

For emails, post, social media and web chat the same basic formula holds

Service level = [ Number of contacts answered within the service level threshold] / [Number of contacts offered] * 100

Jonty Pearce
9 Feb at 4:33 pm

Our Service level is to answer 80% of the calls in 120 seconds and we are fairly successful in delivering this. Our client satisfaction is 84% overall and satisfaction with the wait time is 77% which aligns with the ICCS CitizensFirst7 findings. We handle about 450 thousand calls annually with about 30 staff and we are open 24/7.
We include the abandons in service level in a positive way (treat the same as handled in SL). When I look at a sample of our abandons in service level I see that about 40% abandon in the first 15 seconds telling me that we never had a chance to get to them – they probably got a call on the other line or some other distraction came about.
We have a SL for email of 5 business days but tend to respond within about 1.5-2 days.
We inherited our targets and calculation and we’ve been audtited a few times over and asked why it is what it is. Thank you all for sharing your information, it will help me in my discussions.
Take care,

Kyla
6 Mar at 3:01 pm

Is it also correct to establish SL without specify any threshold? Positive and negative effects on measuring it in this way?
I.e, the formula could be: Service level = [ Number of calls answered / [Number of calls offered] * 100
Otherwise, how is possibile to identify the right threshold? Does exist a formula? In this case what values need to be considered (ie: agents number, calls forecast, AHT..) Or if a formula doesn’t exist, what are the best practices?
Thanks!

Fabio
28 Jun at 10:45 pm

Including abandoned calls in the Service Level calculation is the right thing to do if you respect your customers. The short call threshold takes into consideration calls that you determine really weren’t valid calls and didn’t give the call center a reasonable chance to answer. I think a reasonable short threshold is 5 to 10 seconds. After that why should anyone be surprised that a customer might reasonably expect to have their call answered with a minimum wait time? Customers don’t know or care what your internal goal is. Excluding abandons that drop before the Service Time is theoretically the same as setting your short call threshold to the same thing as your goal time.

Most of the opinions expressed that would like to see abandons excluded from the calculation are probably looking at it from the call center point of view and are concerned with what they are being held accountable to. This is not a customer centric approach.

The Service Level approach described and recommended in the article is taking into consideration the customer experience. By including abandons in the calculation you are better able to see what your customers are experiencing and potentially hearing what they expect.

Simple example – Business sets a goal of 80% in 60 seconds. If they are offered 100 calls and 99 of them abandon between 30 and 45 seconds in queue and the one remaining call is answered at 65 second what is the resulting Service Level? If you include the abandons you’re looking at a 1% Service Level. If you exclude them, congratulations, you’re at 99%! Now don’t we feel good about ourselves, we exceeded our SL goal! Yes, I’m sure we’ll get around to looking at the abandonment rate separately and we might figure out what our customers are trying to tell us… That they aren’t willing to wait 60 seconds to have their call answered and they’re taking their business elsewhere.

Even if you’re the only game in town isn’t the whole point of providing a service is to provide a good service that meets your customer’s needs? There are a lot of valid reasons why a center can’t support a more aggressive, customer friendly service level goal. But even if the center can’t do 80% in 30 seconds shouldn’t we really know how what percent of our callers are getting that experience rather than fooling ourselves into believing that we are meeting their needs?

Chris
4 Aug at 5:51 pm

How can I calculate the service level if I have data of call volume and number of headcount? Can I forecast the service level can be achieved?